Prague’s OK of Rights Rally Seen as Bow to Reformers

The government’s decision to allow a coalition of dissident groups to demonstrate today in support of human rights is being read by some opposition figures and Western diplomats as an indication that the hard-line regime is being forced to make grudging concessions to pressures for reform.

While actual political and economic reforms remain elusive, observers here suggest that a high-ranking Soviet official may have insistently urged the government of Communist Party leader Milos Jakes recently to ease its pressure on dissident organizations such as the Charter 77 human rights group.

Although the substance of talks last month between Czechoslovakian authorities and Soviet Politburo member Alexander N. Yakovlev have not been made public, some party sources and diplomats say they have learned that, in one meeting with Jakes and key members of the Central Committee, Yakovlev made it clear that Moscow was not happy with the slow pace of reform here.

Moreover, the Yakovlev visit coincided with the publication of unusually candid commentaries in the party newspaper Rude Pravo, some of them calling on the party to “expose errors and mistakes, not only in the economy but in politics.”

One of the articles, an interview with Miroslav Stepan, apparently the up-and-coming party chief in Prague, criticized what he said was the party’s failure to deal with mounting economic problems and its inability to deal with political opposition except through force.

Only a few weeks earlier, Stepan, 43, told a rally of party faithful that “there can be no dialogue here” with the dissident opposition.

Today’s planned rally was permitted by Czech authorities after two days of negotiations with the dissident groups. Such extensive negotiations, dissidents said, were unprecedented. Applications for rallies by opposition groups are routinely denied, they said.

The rally, to mark International Human Rights Day, will be held in a square about a mile from Prague’s central Wenceslas Square, and it will be the first to be held with government permission in almost 20 years.

Activists from the Independent Peace Movement on Friday night were handing out rally leaflets in subway stations. Dissidents said this week that the government had agreed to print notices of the protests in Friday’s afternoon newspapers, but there appeared to be no mention of them published.

On Oct. 28, authorities used riot police, tear gas and water cannon to break up a crowd of about 5,000 Czechs who defied a government ban on independent observances commemorating the 70th anniversary of the nation’s independence.

In response to the police action, the American delegate to a follow-up conference in Vienna on the 1975 Helsinki Accords announced that the United States would not support holding a scheduled economic conference in Prague next year because of the government’s record on human rights.

Diplomatic sources say they have learned that the Soviets were upset about the U.S. position and passed on their displeasure to the Czech party leaders.

French President Francois Mitterrand, on a two-day visit to Czechoslovakia, met Friday with a group of eight dissidents, including banned playwright Vaclav Havel, a Charter 77 activist. Later, Havel expressed surprise and pleasure that Rude Pravo had printed Mitterrand’s critical remarks about the suppression of the 1968 “Prague Spring” reform movement.

Flanked by Jakes and President Gustav Husak, Mitterrand said: “You are aware of the considerable impact in France of that period called the ‘Prague Spring.’ . . . You are aware there is no point in remaining silent about it.”

“It’s the first mention of the ‘Prague Spring’ in Rude Pravo in 20 years,” Havel said. Another activist, Milos Hajek, called Mitterrand’s reference to the period “excellent.”

At a news conference before his departure, Mitterrand said he had discussed human rights issues with Jakes and Husak and said the subject had been opened by the two Czech leaders. He declined to report what the two men told him, but he said, “Everyone (in Czechoslovakia) at all levels of society knows that these problems exist, and no one believes that they can be dealt with by silence.”

In the years since the “Prague Spring,” Czechs were subjected to one of the toughest crackdowns in the Soviet Bloc. The present party leader, Jakes, who replaced Husak a year ago, presided over the purge of about 500,000 party members following the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion that put down a reform effort initiated by the government of Alexander Dubcek.

During his year in power, Jakes has done little to suggest to Czechs that modernizing trends in the Soviet Union, and in such countries as Hungary and Poland, would extend to their own system.